For the first time, lead isotope analysis traces the supply of kohl, the substance commonly
used as eye paint in ancient Egypt, to the area of Lower Nubia during the Bronze Age.
The above has been communicated by a team of experts led by Rennan Lemos, (Department of Archaeology and McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge), who worked on kohl samples from two areas in Lower Nubia. Their research was published in the journal Scientific Reports, 14(1), 1-11.

Pharaonic Egypt largely owes its immense economic and cultural growth to the contact with its direct southern neighbor, Nubia (modern day Sudan). The dawn of the Bronze Age
already finds the newborn pharaonic state linked with Lower Nubia through elite trade
networks, consolidated and systematized during the Pyramid age and the Middle Kingdom.

The rise of the powerful Nubian state of Kush at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the
colonization of Nubia by Egypt during the Late Bronze Age only meant that cultural contact, and, together with it, the need for access to the sources of luxury goods, which include minerals, was always intense.

Researchers explain that there is a substantial amount of data on the mineral sources used
in Bronze Age Egypt, the supply networks to Sudanese Lower Nubia remain largely
unknown. To shed light on these supply networks, researchers conducted lead isotope
analysis on 11 kohl samples from C-group, Pan-grave and New Kingdom funerary contexts in the Debeira and Ashkeit regions of Sudanese Lower Nubia. The samples were categorized into two distinct groups based on their lead isotope ratios.

A comparison of the kohl samples from Sudanese Lower Nubia with galena ores from
various mining sites along Egypt's Red Sea coast revealed that some of the galena used in the kohl mixtures in Sudanese Lower Nubia likely originated from the Pharaonic mining site of Gebel el-Zeit, on the mainland Egyptian Red Sea coast. The second group of Nubian samples appears to come from a different, yet unidentified, galena source.
“Samples from C-group, Pan-grave and New Kingdom contexts in Sudanese Lower Nubia
clustered together with Egyptian samples dating from the same periods alongside ores from the Gebel el-Zeit galena mines. This suggests that there was a direct connection between the state-led exploitation of galena in Egypt and consumption of kohl in Sudanese Lower Nubia before and during the Egyptian colonization of the area by both settled and mobile groups. Alternative groupings of Nubian kohl samples further suggest that other, likely local sources of galena were connected to the consumption of kohl in Sudanese and Egyptian Lower Nubia. However, given the current unavailability of ore data for Sudan and the limited amount of information for Egypt, it remains impossible to determine the provenance of the rest of the kohl samples used in Sudanese Lower Nubia”, the research team concludes.

This study represents the first integration of kohl samples from Sudanese Lower Nubia into established northeastern African supply networks using lead isotope analysis.